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Being compared to one of the greatest directors in film history can become a burden for any filmmaker, let alone being compared to several of them. Happy, Steven Spielberg is also one of the greatest directors in film history, so he’s never let those lofty claims slow him down.
While the legend behind Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s Listand countless others have left their own indelible mark on the industry, developing a signature set of motifs and techniques that are entirely his own. Two names clearly inspired him more than most.
Spielberg’s innate understanding of storytelling on an epic canvas, the sense of grandeur that defined his greatest productions, and the delicate balance of character-driven stories told against overwhelming backdrops are essentially a distillation of John Ford and David Lean. two titans with towering influences about the three-time Academy Award winner since his earliest days.
Leans Lawrence of Arabia Spielberg had so much influence that he was convinced he could never make it as a director because there was no chance he could ever compete with the 1962 masterpiece, and his filmography was constantly peppered with homages to Ford’s magnum opus, The seekersa film he religiously rewatches before starting each feature film.
These two titles have left heavy fingerprints on Spielberg’s catalog dating back to the 1970s, but there was one film in which he was able to fully express his love for not only Ford, but also his most famous on-screen collaborator. When the eye-patched author teamed up with John Wayne, the end result was usually a grandiose story that captured stunning vistas and cast whatever character “The Duke” played as an everyman intent on overcoming insurmountable odds.
We go to the battlefield to adapt Michael Morpungo’s novel War horse for the screen, Spielberg saw it as the perfect opportunity to indulge in one of his first touchstones. The British countryside was millions of miles away from the wide open spaces of America, but the director saw the story of a man and his horse as the ideal channel for Ford and Wayne to go all out in the way he captured the images.
Spielberg acknowledged that he had called in regular cinematographer Janusz Kaminski for this and admitted that he The skinny one that one Ford film, above all others, was constantly at the forefront of his thinking. “In The silent personhe included the land as part of his stories; the country was a character,” he said. “It’s kind of nice to put on a wide-angle lens and not take close-ups all the time.”
Just like Ford used the Irish landscape The silent person To make it feel integral to the story, Spielberg tried to do the same with both rural Devon and the French battlefields in War horse. It’s neither an obvious connection nor a shock to discover that Spielberg deliberately challenged one of his film heroes. However, that reverence might explain why War horse often felt too heavy-handed and sticky for his own good.
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